What’s in a Title?

I have often had people ask me, “So what do you coach: Business or Personal”. I add that I coach in both areas. Really the two are intertwined so how one can separate them from each other is beyond me.

The second question I get asked is, “What business experience do you have?”. I actually have business experience. I worked with an organization called Calgary Technologies for a year and a half as an on-site coach. They are a business incubator for start-up technology companies. It was terribly exciting. But the one thing I learned from them was this: I was not working there to be everything to everyone. They had business mentors; people experienced in creating business plans, executive summaries, and financial issues of all sorts. They had investor forums and Venture Capitalists to connect these start-ups with money. In other words they had lots of support.

When I met with clients it was not about how to manage their business. It was most often how to organize their company, build relationships and maintain the ones they had. They didn’t want me to tell them how to run their business. They had all the help they needed. They wanted me to guide them through the personal investments they were making in their business. Invariably this meant personal coaching as well.

Almost every client I’ve ever had, started as a request for a business coach and we would journey into their personal lives as well and most often it was the first step. They didn’t need me to tell them how to run their business. They were already experts at that. They wanted to create new behaviors and habits that made them powerful Leaders in their business. What they found was that it made them the Leaders of their own lives as well.

The third question I get asked is, “So you’re a brain-based coach. What is that?” It’s all about thinking in a way that causes the brain to create new maps and networks. These new maps and networks are the fertile grounds of new behaviours and habits. This is the garden of the new way of doing things. Let the brain weed out the old behaviours and habits and plant some new seeds.